Probably, but does it honestly matter? I honestly think that such a club as the Senate sometimes gets together and decides which guy is going to be the "fall guy" (take the blame for opposing popular legislation that no one wants to be seen actively opposing but all have reservations against), even in situations where it's done discretely, like this.

I'm finding it curious why Intel put time and effort into verifying that the key was cracked -- do they have some sort of competing DRM technology they're about to try and start marketing? :\ What's their payoff?

The photos were registered with the US Copyright office because all "leaks" like this are just agent-created publicity stunts. The same goes for Paris Hilton's old video and, well, everything else involving sex, videos, or "celebrities."

Well, you probably needed a new computer for a lot more reasons than just Spore, then -- I'm running spore on old hardware: Athlon 64 2800 cpu (4+ yrs old), ATI X700 video card (4+ yrs old), 1 GB RAM, and it all works zippy without any slowdown. ;)